Priya Chandra

There’s a pretty nifty new feature in LinkedIn called endorsements*. It allows your contracts to endorse you for various skills based on your profile. Kind of like a one word recommendation in fact.

Some commentators have canned the idea, but I like the concept as it is particularly useful for people who know you and would like to recommend you but haven’t actually worked with you so can’t ethically use that particular feature.

It is also handy for highlighting particular skills and expertise in a single click rather than wading through long and sometimes badly written recommendations.

Finding your endorsements

Endorsements is turned on by default in all LinkedIn profiles. To see what skills (if any) you have been endorsed for go to Profile / View Profile and scroll down to Skills and Expertise.

There you’ll see your endorsements and the photos of people who have endorsed you.

Don’t like what you see?

Rather than View Profile, select Edit Profile and then scroll down to Skills and Expertise.

Click on the Pencil icon and remove any endorsements you don’t want associated with your profile. This can be done even (especially) if someone has already endorsed you for a particular skill or area of expertise.

If you’d like to add some suggestions, you can do that as well. LinkedIn will auto-suggest skills (areas of expertise) as you type but you can add any phrase that you like.

You can select/add a total of 50 skills and also move the skills around (providing you haven’t already been endorsed for that item).

If you have been endorsed for something that you’d prefer not be shown, click on “Manage Endorsements” and then select the item you wish to edit. You can either hide the entire list of people who have endorsed you or select to hide endorsements by certain individuals.

Or, if you want, you can turn the whole endorsements feature off altogether by selecting the drop down arrow next to: “Display your endorsements?”

Making your endorsements more prominent

If you like, you can also drag the whole Skills and Expertise section to a different part of your profile. Click and hold on the double-headed arrow to the right of the pencil icon and then drag the section to your preferred spot.

Endorsing someone else

If you’d like to endorse a connection for a particular skill go to their profile. From here you can either select from the endorsement recommendations at the top of the profile, or scroll down the profile until you find the full list of skills. Click on either the skill name itself or the + sign to create the endorsement.

(If you personally have a long profile, then make it easier for people to endorse you by having your skills closer to the top of the profile)

You can add skills for other people if you like, and it is even possible to remove endorsements you’ve made for other people. Just click on the + sign next to the skill and click “Remove Endorsement.”

Go forth and endorse

Hopefully this has given you some idea of how to use the endorsement feature in LinkedIn not just for your own profile but to build the profiles of your connections.

How are you using the endorsement feature? What benefits or otherwise do you find in it?

*Only for select countries at the time of writing, including U.S.A, Australia, New Zealand, and India.

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